A Victorian biologist and philosopher, Herbert Spencer was born April 27th,
1820, at the height of British industrialism. He was educated at home in
mathematics, natural science, history and English, among some other languages.
Spencer was sickly in his youth, all eight of his other siblings dying at a
young age. His constitution remained weak throughout his life, and he would
later suffer from nervous breakdowns which he never recovered from, and he
wandered about London never in a complete state of good health. He suffered
from chronic insomnia, could only work a few hours a day, and used fairly
substantial amounts of opium. He experienced a strange sensation in his head
which he called "the mischief", and was known for eccentricities
like the wearing of ear-plugs to avoid over-excitement, especially when he
could not hold his ground in an argument. He obtained a job as a civil
engineer on the railways at sixteen and wrote during his spare time. This
vocation of his took up ten years of his life, and imbued him with a healthy
optimism for life and society.

Spencer became the sub-editor of The Economist in 1848, an important
financial weekly at the time for the upper-middle class. He interacted with
famous people like Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall, among many other leading
intellectuals of Victorian Britain. Spencer published numerous articles in the
radical press of his time, like The Leader, The Fortnightly and
The Westminster Review, largely concerning the government, pushing for
limiting its role as a mediator in society. He advocated the abolishment of
Poor Laws, national education
and a central church; he wanted the lifting of all restrictions on commerce
and factory legislation. Across the street from where he worked was John Chapman's
office, and that was where he first met his assistant Marian Evans, later known
as George Eliot. They developed a very
close friendship, and talked of marriage but never actually married. Even so,
they remained intimate companions up till her death. His book Social Statics
was published in 1851 to great acclaim, but his quietly influential Principles
Of Psychology released in 1855 met with much criticism.

Although one of the most influential figures in sociology and psychology, Spencer was
overshadowed because of his somewhat controversial ideas. In fact, his theory
of evolution actually preceded Charles Darwin's, when he wrote The Developmental
Hypothesis in 1852, 7 years before Darwin's Origin Of Species!
His theory was not taken into serious consideration largely because of a lack
of an effective theoretical system for natural selection. Nevertheless, it was
Spencer and not Darwin who first popularized the term "Evolution",
and few people outside the field realize that the oft-used phrase "survival
of the fittest" was actually coined by Spencer!

His evolutionary stance led to his most famous idea,
"Social
Darwinism." It influenced early evolutionary
economists like Thorstein Veblen, as well as the members of the American
apologist school like William Graham Sumner. He projected his theory of
biological evolution onto a social plane, emphasizing the importance of
organic analogy, i.e. the similarities between Organism and State. He saw
evolution as the change from a homogeneous condition that was innately
unstable, to a heterogenous and stable one. He highlighted four main
concepts: Growth, Differentiation, Integration and Adaptation, ideas
commonly present in developmental biology, and which could easily be brought
into the context of a developing, growing society.

Spencer's last years were characterized by a collapse of his initial
optimism, replaced instead by a pessimism regarding the future of mankind.
Nevertheless, he devoted much of his efforts in reinforcing his arguments
and preventing the mis-interpretation of his monumental theory of
non-interference. He was admired by many intellectuals, including American
philosopher William James, but was frequently accused of being petty,
hypochondriacal, and maudlin. He died in 1903, and is buried at Highgate
Cemetery near George Eliot and Karl Marx.